He is accused of taking part in a raid on a sports memorabilia dealer at a hotel room in the Palace Station Casino on Thursday.

He faces charges including robbery with a deadly weapon, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Mr Simpson says he was trying to retrieve stolen items belonging to him, and denies any guns were involved.

Police are holding another man, named as Walter Alexander, 46, in connection with the case, and are looking for four other suspects.

Officers said two guns were confiscated during a raid on a house in the Las Vegas area.

Mr Simpson gained international notoriety in 1995 when he was tried and acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

'Facing time'

Las Vegas police said Mr Simpson was charged with two counts of robbery using a deadly weapon - the most serious offence he is accused of.

He was also charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit a crime, and burglary with a firearm.

Mr Simpson will be held in custody without bail at a detention centre until Thursday, when he is due to appear in court.

During a press conference, Clark County District Attorney David Roger said Mr Simpson was "facing a lot of time".

The police, since my trouble, have not worked out for me

OJ Simpson

The 60-year-old Mr Simpson said he and other people were trying to get back mementos that were stolen from him.

But he said his past had prevented him from seeking help from the authorities in retrieving the items.

"The police, since my trouble, have not worked out for me," he told the Associated Press.

He claimed that whenever he had called the police in recent years, "it just becomes a story about OJ".

Settlements

Although Mr Simpson was cleared of murder in a criminal court in 1995, he was later found liable for the deaths at a civil trial.

He was ordered to pay $33.5m (£17m) in damages - money that has never been collected.

In July this year the rights to Mr Simpson's book, If I Did It, were awarded to Mr Goldman's family to help recoup some of those damages.

The book, in which Mr Simpson describes hypothetically how he could have killed his ex-wife and her friend, was published in the US last Thursday by Beaufort Books with the title, If I Did It: Confession of the Killer.

The publication followed months of legal wrangling after Rupert Murdoch's companies cancelled plans to publish the book following a public outcry in 2006.